Research Opportunity for Undergraduates
Title: Characterization of mechanical properties of additive manufactured metal parts
This study is to investigate the tensile strength and failure characteristics of metal alloy parts built by additive manufacturing. Additive manufacturing is gaining global popularity due to its unprecedented capabilities that it can provide. One of the challenges remaining for wide spread industrial use of AM is to predict/control the resultant mechanical properties. Additive manufacturing due to its nature of localized heating and solidification layer by layer inherently produces non-homogeneous microstructure. This study is to establish property-structure-parameter relationships of AM built metal parts. The participating undergraduate student(s) is expected to work with a graduate student to prepare samples for microstructure measurement, conduct heat treatment and mechanical testing, and analyze the results to generate reports on findings. An opportunity also exists to use the Raman structural spectroscopy to measure mechanical and thermal properties at the grain/subgrain level and correlate it to the macroscopic hardness and tensile testing results. In addition, the project provides a 10-week summer internship opportunity at an Naval Warfare Center.
The project is available for ME497 and ME498.
Requirements: Junior or senior standing with GPA higher than 3.5, U.S. citizenship required.
Contact: Professor Yung C. Shin, shin@purdue.edu, 4-9775, MEG82